The monologue – delivered by pupil Faith Sobotker – was in response to an emergency assembly at her school where students were told they were banned from wearing makeup and ordered to stop sending "sexy selfies".

Faith, 15, took offence to the demands of her school – Kambrya College in Melbourne, Australia – and decided to fight back using social media during a textile class.

In a clip shared on Facebook on Thursday she says: "My self-respect is doing what I want. When I'm hungry I eat. When I'm thirsty I drink.

"You can't tell me what self-respect is. You can't tell me what lady like is. We don't live in the 50s anymore."

Her friends filming her laugh and egg her on as she gains momentum and gets even more passionate: "I am looking for equality.

"I am looking to show off my body without being sexualised. I am 15 years old. You do not get to sexualise me like that.

"You don't get to tell me that my body is sacred – because it isn't. Half the population is female. We're not sacred. We're not a new discovery."

And just as she thinks she's gone too far and is about to stop a friend encourages her further saying off camera: "Everybody's saying preach it. You're saying what everyone thinks!"

She goes on to criticise the restrictions the school have given them, saying they are denying her and her fellow students everything that makes them female: "People know that I have legs, I have knees and thighs. And I have a vagina. And it bleeds once a month.

"I'm sick of the sexism. These girls can be however they want to be."

The video has racked up hundreds of thousands of hits on social media.

FACEBOOK/FAITHSOBOTKER

KEEPING THE FAITH: Schoolgirl Sobotker posted an impassioned plea for young girls' rights

One Facebook user wrote: "Well done. The school staff got this soooo wrong. I hope they have spent the weekend doing some serious thinking."

Another commented: "You go young woman. We old feminists are proud. Your future is bright and your choices boundless."

But a third added: "I agree with you on the whole skirt thing because the short skirts at school aren't even that short.

"However I don't want to be in public and see someone in such short shorts that the bottom of their buttocks is showing. Boy or girl."

She's not the only person to speak up for something they believe in on social media.